Ask HN: Whats your best workflows to draft legal agreements without lawyers?
I just got an insane bill from a lawyer for drafting an agreement.
I was wondering if some of you have a great workflow for drafting legal agreements with AI that are good enough to have a lawyer just review it?
My background is CS, so it's hard judge myself and I feel ChatGPT doesn't give enough details.
14 comments
Shop around for rates. Lawyers should be able to give you cost or cost range up front for drafting a document.
Don't use AI. If it's a standard standard type of document with fairly low risk, you could look up templates specific to your jurisdiction. So some research on what those documents should contain and read through several. Then pick the one you think is the best. This can work for things like setting up an LLC, sales contracts for common types of work/items, etc. It's not a good idea for more complicated things like divorce agreements, complicated and novel B2B agreements, etc.
When using AI, you have to have enough domain knowledge to recognize when it's giving you junk answers. This might be easy and lower risk when you're asking it to make you a static website, or write your school paper for you. Things like legal topics may have a lot of nuance that makes it harder to identify the low quality responses.
Don't use AI. If it's a standard standard type of document with fairly low risk, you could look up templates specific to your jurisdiction. So some research on what those documents should contain and read through several. Then pick the one you think is the best. This can work for things like setting up an LLC, sales contracts for common types of work/items, etc. It's not a good idea for more complicated things like divorce agreements, complicated and novel B2B agreements, etc.
When using AI, you have to have enough domain knowledge to recognize when it's giving you junk answers. This might be easy and lower risk when you're asking it to make you a static website, or write your school paper for you. Things like legal topics may have a lot of nuance that makes it harder to identify the low quality responses.
I hope this is a joke, but unfortunately it might not be.
A growing number of actual practicing lawyers have got themselves into serious legal trouble by using AI to draft legal documents. You are not going to do better than them; you are going to do worse.
If it's something important, hire a lawyer (expensive) or buy a pre-written legal document that has already been written by a lawyer (cheap).
If it's something unimportant then just agree everything in email and that will be legitimate evidence if you ever need to go to court - and going to court should be your last resort anyway.
Whatever it is, "saving money" by writing a legal document yourself with or without the "help" of AI is a terrible terrible idea.
A growing number of actual practicing lawyers have got themselves into serious legal trouble by using AI to draft legal documents. You are not going to do better than them; you are going to do worse.
If it's something important, hire a lawyer (expensive) or buy a pre-written legal document that has already been written by a lawyer (cheap).
If it's something unimportant then just agree everything in email and that will be legitimate evidence if you ever need to go to court - and going to court should be your last resort anyway.
Whatever it is, "saving money" by writing a legal document yourself with or without the "help" of AI is a terrible terrible idea.
I have handled a few personal legal matters myself by drafting with Lex.page (a very useful tool for any writing but you can also accomplish about the same thing with Google Docs and Gemini.)
It’s also important to perfectly prompt the “AI” promptly to perfection. You have to tell it who it is, what it is doing and make sure to be specific about the scope and legal matters involved.
Break it down into smaller chunks and once you have a draft you like, send the draft to another “AI” and ask it to play as a lawyer on the other side of your equation and “rip apart” the draft letter you wrote like any good lawyer would.
Make your two “AI” models adversarial to each other until the final result is a rock solid document.
It’s also important to perfectly prompt the “AI” promptly to perfection. You have to tell it who it is, what it is doing and make sure to be specific about the scope and legal matters involved.
Break it down into smaller chunks and once you have a draft you like, send the draft to another “AI” and ask it to play as a lawyer on the other side of your equation and “rip apart” the draft letter you wrote like any good lawyer would.
Make your two “AI” models adversarial to each other until the final result is a rock solid document.
thanks for the tip with two AI models. I've done that in writing coding specs. I already gave it a lot of detail about who it is. will give this a try.
Do you have an exit criteria that you can define for when the models stop picking on the other models solutions?
Do you have an exit criteria that you can define for when the models stop picking on the other models solutions?
Exit criteria is a great idea and probably a best practice if you are wanting an agentic style workflow. I have not yet let go of the reigns.
Don't do it. It makes about as much sense as performing surgery on yourself.
> I just got an insane bill from a lawyer for drafting an agreement.
If you feel you were overcharged, find a lawyer who has more reasonable rates. They're out there. For simple contracts, you could even make use of low cost legal aid outfits.
> I just got an insane bill from a lawyer for drafting an agreement.
If you feel you were overcharged, find a lawyer who has more reasonable rates. They're out there. For simple contracts, you could even make use of low cost legal aid outfits.
Got to the public library and check out some books from Nolo Press.
What's the workflow for going to the library though, and how goes ChatGPT integrate with it? Is there an MCP for Nolo Press?
(1) Get in my car, drive to the library, pay $1 an hour to park, find a contract in the book, type it in, edit, done
(2) Ask Nolo Press
(2) Ask Nolo Press
Ah yes, vibe legal planning!
We lawyers have a saying: pay me now or pay me later.
Trying to handle your own legal affairs without a lawyer is a recipe for disaster. (Analogizing for the HN crowd: it's a bit like thinking you can invent your own cryptography library for essential software.) Even lawyers need lawyers! ("A lawyer who represents himself has an idiot for a client.")
I will look forward to the prospect of handling the inevitable litigation that arises from those of you drafting your own agreements — and, better yet, your appeals after you still don't learn your lesson and then try to represent yourselves in court too.
If it's important enough to put in writing, it's important enough to rely on competent legal counsel.
We lawyers have a saying: pay me now or pay me later.
Trying to handle your own legal affairs without a lawyer is a recipe for disaster. (Analogizing for the HN crowd: it's a bit like thinking you can invent your own cryptography library for essential software.) Even lawyers need lawyers! ("A lawyer who represents himself has an idiot for a client.")
I will look forward to the prospect of handling the inevitable litigation that arises from those of you drafting your own agreements — and, better yet, your appeals after you still don't learn your lesson and then try to represent yourselves in court too.
If it's important enough to put in writing, it's important enough to rely on competent legal counsel.